48 CYLINER TINKER TOY

[Music] I've been building special one-off bikes was quite a long time before the 48 cylinder the first special I built was in 1985 I started this project it was actually a five-year program I did about 85% of the work in the last whole month which was quite traumatic for me well the Kawasaki triples rallies where it all started I've been going there since 1985 every year and every now and again someone would turn up on a hybrid carro sake trip or which I like the look of so shortly after their dad about 1987 I built a four cylinder triple that then went into a triple triple which had nine cylinders and then I built the inline seven triple and then I built an h2 are replicas and in a way this bike was the bike to end all of that it's called tinker toy which I got the name from the duxford air museum which was the name of her Flying Fortress in the Second World War it's quite a famous story although those Flying Fortresses were given names this one was called tinker toy which is actually the American version of the car No so it sort of come full circle the name it's not made for speed it's not really made for power it was made again in the Guinness Book of Records it's got to be able to do about a hundred and twenty thirty miles an hour the cylinders offer KH 250 which was the most prolific Kawasaki triple they made so the parts were pretty easy to get hold of them quite cheap [Music] the whole exhaust systems handmade had to make in sections the headers because as soon as you welded one end the other end started twisting and once you've made the headers the conventional middle pipes of just stainless steel which had a guide Bend up had to machine some brackets for it and then they all tip into it's a twenty four into one system they tip into a conventional four-stroke in Ken this looks like the tank is actually was an original cage 250 tank cut about here and here with another section welded in it's simply a cover and housing the illumination the electronic ignition circuits these are my amplifier boards for the ignition come back here you've got the throttle splitter which I had to be made out of billet the throttle comes down here and you have to awfully split it it's quite stiff but it's a perfect usable one cable coming from the twist grip comes round this wheel so reverses you can go off to the carbs and this is a small header tank for the donkey engine there's a water cooling circuit runs around here filled up from here and that's just to allow a bit of heat to dissipate when you're firing up this engine on repeated starts little fuse box at the back here all the wiring and loom I made myself sneaked away down here is a small car alternator which provides electricity of course this is the BMW gearbox with its standard gear leaver I had to extend the shaft slightly is a little bit fiddly to get out but that wasn't really the whole point BMW footrest mounts some slightly altered to miss the pipe the front wheel is a made by Hagen they've strung a peg on aluminum rim with stainless steel spokes onto a Honda Goldwing Hubb holding the Honda Goldwing disks brakes calipers Forks we put an extra spring on here just to take the weight and the pretty much the whole of the front end is Honda Goldwing apart from the clocks which are cage 250 Kawasaki Dave Sperry the engineer who built all that end of the bike he basically had to adapt all of it he machined up a new hub and hagun put it into one of their rims stainless steel spokes heaviest Duty you can get underneath a fairly conventional seat which is just made out of sheet steel the tailpiece here is Kawasaki cage 250 but I did have to widened by about an inch and a half just to fit the frame you have the battery compartment no battery in there at the moment and the donkey engine which is a 1 2 5 2 stroke twisting go scooter job down running through here is the exhaust there's no silencer on it which is why it's so loud but once the main engine is running it's very very smooth is so many cylinders Musudan as you have the smoother this collection of pipes here collects any overflow from the carburetors which previously was dripping over the distributors and causing a small fire these are the main fuel distribution pipes which run around all of the carburetors and the donkey engine at the back of the bike and they come back to the fuel pump through a little restriction nozzle which gives it the right amount of fuel pressure to start the bike here it's a manual choke so you push that lever down that's the choke on once it's warmed up you pull them off turn the ignition on here which would power up the fuel pump and the ignition system this is the ignition switch for the donkey engine that live-ins out so you push that until it starts rev it on here once that's running fine you can turn it off and then and you're on to normal running but you've got to be careful if this thing falls on you you will lose your leg it's 600 kilograms I've started it on numerous occasions it's a little bit tricky to ride but before we brought it here to this museum its final resting place for now I did ride it if anybody wanted to make me a serious offer on this bike personally I don't want to sell it it's the money's not important but if a half a million pounds turned up I could be persuaded don't tell the wife [Applause] you

Channel: 48 Cylinder motorbike

Views: 613,834

Keywords: 48 cylinder kawasaki, motorbike, 48 cylinder, kawasaki, superbike, bike, tinker toy, 48 engine

Id: pJ-QNMBtiEo

Length: 7min 44sec (464 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 06 2018